The Journal of Educational ResearchPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjer20

Development of the Primary Teacher QuestionnaireKenneth E. Smith aa University of Nebraska at OmahaPublished online: 15 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Kenneth E. Smith (1993) Development of the Primary Teacher Questionnaire, The Journal of EducationalResearch, 87:1, 23-29, DOI: 10.1080/00220671.1993.9941162

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1993.9941162

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Development of the Primary Teacher Questionnaire KENNETH E. SMITH University of Nebraska at Omaha

ABSTRACT This study desenbes the development of the Primary Teacher Questionnaire (PTQ), a self-report teacher be- liefs scale based on the National Association for the Education of Young Children Position Statement on Developmentally Ap- propriate Practice in the Primary Grades. The study was con- ducted in three phases: item development, initial testing and scale refinement, and field testing. In the field test, a 42item version of the PTQ, consisting of an 18-item developmentally based subscale (DAP) and a %item traditionally based subscale (TRAD), was administered to 144 elementary and early child- hood preservice and inservice teachers. Each subscale highly dif- ferentiated respondents on the basis of background in early childhood education. In addition, the PTQ subscales were in- ternally consistent, with high reliability estimates (DAP = ,802; TRAD = .867). Factor analysis showed two factors that, al- though they did not account for a high proportion of the scale variation, did show item clusters that were highly consistent with the logical structure of the guidelines on which the PTQ was based. The PTQ appears to be a useful instrument for examin- ing teacher beliefs about appropriate practice in primary-grade settings.

n 1986, the National Association for the Education of I Young Children (NAEYC) began publishing a series of position papers focusing on recommendations for de- velopmentally based early childhood education. In 1987, these were compiled and published under the title Devel- opmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8 (Bredekamp, 1987). They reflected concern about the spread of academically oriented preschool, kindergarten, and primary-grade programs (Gallagher & Coche, 1987; Hatch & Freeman, 1988b; Hills, 1987; Sigel, 1987) and about how common several disturbing teaching practices had become in many early childhood settings (Charles- worth, 1989; Kagan & Zigler, 1987). Developmentally in- appropriate educational practices included the early for- mal teaching of reading rather than the facilitation of general language competence (Willert & Kamii, 1985), a stress on whole-group direct instruction instead of on play as a learning medium (Saracho, 1986), and the pre- dominance of teacher-controlled, highly structured ab- stract materials such as workbooks and ditto sheets

As the early childhood education community reacted to the extent of the drift away from developmentally ap- propriate practice, several reports and position papers were issued from various professional organizations in the field. Besides NAEYC, these groups included the As- sociation for Childhood Education International (Moyer, Egertson, & Isenberg, 1987), the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE, 1988), and the Na- tional Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAEYC & NAECWSDE, 1991).

NAE YC Guidelines and Previous Scale Development Of all these documents, the NAEYC guidelines for de-

velopmentally appropriate practice (Bredekamp, 1987) have proved to be the most influential in stimulating a re- evaluation of what constitutes appropriate educational practice with young children and a pull back from inap- propriate practices. Stemming from such fundamental realignment comes the need for an effective means to dif- ferentiate between those early childhood teachers who support developmentally appropriate practice from those teachers who do not. A variety of attempts to construct questionnaires and observation instruments based on various portions of the NAEYC guidelines have already been made. These include questionnaires based on the en- tire birth-through-Age-8 guidelines (Hoot, Bartkowiak, & Goupil, 1989; Vance & Bods, 1989), the NAEYC posi- tion statement on developmentally appropriate practice in programs for 4- and 5-year-olds (Charlesworth, Hart, Burts, & Hernandez, 1990, Hyson, Hirsh-Pasek & Re- corla, 1989), and a classroom observation scale based on the NAEYC position statement on the primary grades (Charlesworth et al.).

In the present article, I describe the development of the Primary Teacher Questionnaire (PTQ), a teacher beliefs scale based on the NAEYC Position Statement About

Developmentally Appropriate Practice in the Primary Grades, Serving 5- Through 8-Year-Olds (Bredekamp, 1987). These NAEYC guidelines represent a coherent set of child-centered, mostly constructivist, principles. The central consideration behind the development of the Pri- mary Teacher Questionnaire was the need for a reliable means to assess the degree to which primary-grade teacher beliefs and values match these principles.

Teacher Be/iefs and Practices How useful is the development of a scale to assess

teacher beliefs rather than one to assess teacher practices? To what degree can classroom behavior be inferred from self-reports of teacher beliefs? Although more research on teacher beliefs is needed in general (Pajares, 1992), earlier work in early education settings does provide some guidance about the utility of measuring teacher beliefs. In general, the attitudes and values held by teachers of young children appear to be related to teacher effective- ness (Feeney & Chun, 1985; Spodek, 1987). Spodek (1988b) described the implicit theories that teachers hold as the foundation of professional behavior and stressed the importance of understanding the perceptions, constructs, and beliefs that underlie teacher effectiveness in the classroom. He argued that teachers construct their own conceptions of development, curriculum, and instruction as they interpret their practical and theoretical knowledge, and as they act to integrate these constructions into their practice (Spodek, 1988a). But, can teacher classroom behavior be inferred from beliefs and constructs?

Thus, a central question concerns the congruence be- tween teacher beliefs and practice in early childhood edu- cation. Verma and Peters (1975) found a discrepancy be- tween daycare teacher reports about their beliefs and their observed classroom practice. Although beliefs were more developmental than behavioral, practice was more behavioral than developmental. Hatch and Freeman (1988a) also found such discrepancies between beliefs and practice in their study of kindergarten teachers, elemen- tary principals, and supervisors. Wing (1989), however, in examining the congruence between the beliefs and practice of preschool teachers, found a basic agreement in settings in which teachers held a clear and systematic set of theoretical principles and had support for putting these principles into action. Smith and Shepard (1988) studied the relationship between kindergarten teachers beliefs about and practices concerning kindergarten readiness and retention in grade and again found basic agreement. Spidell (1988) investigated preschool teach- ers beliefs about play and found their actions related to their beliefs. In addition, Kagan and Smith (1988) found kindergarten teachers self-reports about beliefs and be- haviors to be strongly consistent with their observed classroom practices. Charlesworth et al. (1990) also found support for a consistency between kindergarten teachers beliefs and their instructional activities.

Although the evidence is somewhat mixed, the prepon- derance supports the assumption of a basic congruence between early childhood teachers beliefs and their class- room practices. This congruence, the lack of a teacher- belief scale based on the NAEYC guidelines for the pri- mary grades, and the focus of previous research at the preschool and kindergarten levels indicated that the de- velopment of a new instrument to assess the beliefs of primary-grade teachers would be worthwhile

Methodology This study was conducted in three distinct phases.

Phase 1 involved scale development and was focused on the formation of an item pool; Phase 2 involved testing and refinement of an early version of the instrument; Phase 3 was the actual field testing of the revised Primary Teacher Questionnaire. All data analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-X) (SPSS, 1988).

Item Source and Scale Development Item development. The PTQ was developed from the

position statement on developmentally appropriate prac- tice in the primary grades published by the National As- sociation for the Education of Young Children (Brede- kamp, 1987).

These guidelines consist of paired statements of appro- priate and inappropriate practices for the primary grades. PTQ items were developed from these statements. How- ever, many of the statements could not be used in their original form, because they were often too sweeping in nature (Curriculum is designed to develop childrens knowledge and skills in all developmental areas . . .) or contained too many important ideas in one statement (Teachers promote prosocial behavior, perseverance, industry, and independence . . . ). Therefore, items were constructed so that they each had one conceptual focus, yet retained as much of the wording of the original NAEYC statements as possible. A total of 28 statements of appropriate practice were derived from the guidelines for recommended practice. In addition, 28 statements of inappropriate, or traditional, practice were derived from the descriptions of nonrecommended practice.

However, although the format of the NAEYC guide- lines pairs statements, these pairs do not necessarily rep- resent direct opposites of teacher behavior but, rather, merely conceptual alternatives, one more developmentally based than the other. Examples include The curriculum is integrated so that childrens learning in all traditional subject areas occurs primarily through projects and learning centers that teachers plan and that reflect child- rens interests and suggestions . . . versus Curriculum is divided into separate subjects and time is carefully allotted for each with primary emphasis given to reading and secondary emphasis to math . . . (Bredekamp, 1987, p. 67). Therefore, in the development of the PTQ,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

8:24

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

September/October 1993 [Vol. 87(No. 111 25

the 28 appropriate items and the 28 inappropriate items were treated as belonging to two separate scales, presum- ably measuring two separate realms of teacher belief. Both scales were constructed so that all items were posi- tive statements of what a teacher should do or pri- mary-level education should be.

The 28 items of the developmentally oriented scale (DAP) and the 28 items of the traditionally oriented scale (TRAD) were then critically reviewed for content and wording by a university colleague specializing in early childhood education and a university colleague specializ- ing in elementary education. Revisions were made where necessary to enhance clarity and consistency.

Format. The items from the DAP and TRAD scales were combined and randomly ordered to form one 56-item scale, called the Primary Teacher Questionnaire (see Appendix). Such a neutral name was chosen because the terms associated with the original guidelines (appro- priate, inappropriate) are so value laden as to limit their usefulness. Directions asked respondents to indicate level of agreement with each positively worded statement of teacher belief, using a Cpoint Likert-type scale, compris- ing the categories strong& disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strong& agree. Use of a 4-point scale re- sults in a forced-choice response in either the develop- mentally based or traditional direction, with no room for a neutral response.

Adminktration. A small-scale tryout test of the items on the two scales was administered to 47 undergraduate students, 29 students in an early childhood education course, and 18 students in an elementary education meth- ods course. Based on an item-analysis of these data, 18 items were chosen for the DAP scale, along with 24 i tem for the TRAD scale. I tem were retained if they produced significant correlations with the total subscale score, with that item deleted. The revised DAP and TRAD scales were combine...